The war

• Short story

								
The war 

2020, Afghanistan, Badghis Province, Amaala village:
The perfect condition to find hope does not exist in life, says my grandfather. 
  I saw my grandfather slowly approaching me. His face shone under the cruel and warm sun. Khalida! He shouted, thinking I could not hear him unless he were loud enough. Yes, I answered while running down the hill. Why did you leave your job? I asked looking straight at his face to see his reaction. He answered with a sharp gaze looking at my dirty hands painted with soil. 
“I am retired”.  Retired? I asked quickly as we were walking in the Okra crops that we had a generation to generation of hard fieldwork. 
“It means I don’t have to fight. He answered, his voice getting lower when he came to the word war.  But the war is still here, I said trying to look as if I had made such an important comment of something. You know, Khalida, let me tell you a story of a time when we were at a dangerous place fighting. Five years ago, when my grandfather lost his job as the captain of the army,  after being diagnosed with PTSD from all the battles that he attended, he and my grandmother moved to a small village. Once, when I was in a battle, my grandfather started looking to see if I was paying attention to him, “I learned a life lesson.”  It was night and there was only me, and my two other comrades that we have fought more battles than one can count real hair. It was raining and there was an attack from the enemy, bullets crossing from our heads like the rain itself.  We had no chance and no one to help us. Two of my other comrades started praying to god as soon as they saw the condition. But I knew, praying would not help, we needed a plan! Let's contact the base for help, I shouted, and we did but the help would come in at least an hour since we were in the middle of the woods, far away from the base or the city. That night, you could see blood everywhere, we were all three caught by the enemy. Two of my comrades were scared to death, and so was I, the enemy was the Taliban. If you were to be caught, there is no going back for you! I could see the commander talking with his right-hand man about what they should do with us. That night, khalida, I understood what hope and resilience mean, they did not kill any of us. But, instead, tortured us for a whole hour, but we were still alive. What happened next was that help from the base came and we were rescued, but I understood something that night. Even if you are at the stake of death, there is always a chance, and I call that “hope.” While my grandfather was finishing his story, I was thinking of what would have happened if he had no hope of being rescued. “There is always a way to fight with the injustice, you just have to be resilient enough to believe”. And that was the last word I heard from him. I came to Amaala village, where my grandfather lived to spend my summer and that was the last day I ever saw him in my whole life. The day after, I moved out to the province's center where I lived with my parents. One year later, schools were closed to all Afghan girls because now the government was ruled by the Taliban. I was no longer able to visit my grandparents after that, I also had to stay in the house for one and a half years completely lost without any education. In those days, I always thought of the lesson I learned from my grandfather, that there is always hope. That was what kept me going. I heard the sad news of my grandfather's death on a school day. To have hope means dreaming of the Afghan girls to have the right to education.    
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